Can’t sleep

Can only breathe the sheets, which I press up against my face and smell the faint smell of musk, you, mingled with cigarette smoke. I inhale so deep that it becomes all I can smell. In the dark, it overwhelms.

The other night, I suffocated. The dark pressing against me, the roof seeming lower and lower. All I could feel was what was not there. All I could see was the word that makes me recoil: "loss" in huge Arial font, white on black and all I could hear was your voice saying "that's life, Rowena, you lose people." Like I, of anyone, needed to be reminded of that.

I tried to embrace the emptiness, instead squeezed my pillow tighter and tighter, trying to reduce the air in between molecules, trying to absorb the space.

In the dark, my mouth contorted like a child, wailing until you send a message in the middle of the morning - our night time - and it comforts me. Again like a child, placated by the harsh backlight of a mobile phone, staring at the black characters, reading false comfort in every word, I sleep.